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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoEmad Matti | Associated PressA man dressed as a local police officer detonated a car bomb yesterday, leaving this crater in Kirkuk, Iraq. At least 36 people were killed and 105 injured.

BAGHDAD — A suicide car bomber attacked a provincial police headquarters in the northern Iraqi
city of Kirkuk yesterday morning, the police and the city’s civil defense director said, killing at
least 36 people and wounding 105. Three additional suicide attackers who attempted to enter the
general directorate of Kirkuk police after the blast were killed by the police.

Security forces cordoned off the site and closed government buildings and the main roads in
Kirkuk as ambulances took the wounded to a hospital. The commander of the Kirkuk police was among
those wounded and was taken to Erbil for treatment.

Nauzad Mohamed, a police officer who was wounded in the attack, said the bomber was “driving a
police car and wearing a police uniform.”

“The explosion happened when we asked him to stop for a search,” Mohamed said. “Then everything
collapsed. I can’t believe I survived.”

After the blast, others attacked the police headquarters on foot.

Faris Mustafa, a police officer who also was wounded, said: “I saw the three suicide bombers
running into the police building. They were throwing hand grenades at us. We opened fire on them
and killed them immediately.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Kirkuk’s governor blamed terrorist
gangs seeking to destabilize the city, about 180 miles north of Baghdad.

Kurdish troops and Iraqi government security forces have been sharing responsibility for
security in Kirkuk. Kurds want to incorporate it into their semiautonomous region in northern Iraq,
but Arabs and Turkmens in the city oppose such a move.